Honey Chocolate Cake (for your honey)

I'm getting better at frosting cakes, too! 

Last week marked FOUR YEARS since Judson and I got married, and seven years since we met, which, probably, makes it a lucky anniversary. We’re celebrating in Tenerife, and hopefully right now I am lying on a beach, drinking something out of a coconut and debating whether my next activity should be to take a nap or go for a swim.

But, prior to leaving Edinburgh, of course I had to make a cake to celebrate, and since we’ve moved on from cheesecakes to chocolate cakes, here’s your monthly chocolate cake recipe: a honey cake for your honey.

Here’s the thing, though: This cake is a pain. Almost every ingredient in it requires some kind of prep before you mix it into the cake: the butter has to be softened, the eggs separated and whipped, if you live in a place where you can’t find buttermilk or cake flour, then lemon juice has to be added to your milk, and cornstarch has to be added to your flour, milk has to be scalded, chocolate melted, pans lined, and the list goes on..

But oh man, is it worth it. The last few chocolate cakes that I have made have been airy or fudgey, but I’ve never made one as velvety as this one. And since the cake was taking so long, I enlisted Judson’s help to make the frosting (a job I hate, though I love frosting, and a job Judson loves, although he hates frosting) and I’ll be damned if he didn’t make the tastiest homemade frosting I’ve ever had. It was perfectly smooth and creamy with the richest cocoa flavour I’ve ever encountered in a frosting. 

(I have no idea what kind of frosting is supposed to be on this cake-- the recipe just says 'confectioner's sugar frosting,' and since I couldn't bare to leave such a perfectly moist cake frosting-free, I opted for a simple, deeply chocolate 'cocoa icing,' that blended up smoother than any frosting I've made in awhile.)

So I guess this cake is a good metaphor for being married, even beyond the perfectly pun-able name: in the end, you’ve got a delicious cake, but only after putting a lot of work into it, and even then, there might be moments when you're sure it's all a disaster before it all comes together in the end (like when I tasted the frosting halfway through the process and it had the consistency of dried cement and tasted so bitter I could barely swallow it).

the verdict:

5 spoons out of five. This cake has a rich and velvety texture from the honey without being cloyingly sweet, and the frosting actually tastes like chocolate-- not just like powdered sugar. It's rich and decadent, and the perfect triumph after all the work you'll have to put in to actually make it. 

One year ago: Fancy tomato soup (and an embarrassing story)

The recipe:

Honey Chocolate Cake

the directions:
Cake:

Note that this recipe requires everything to be done in a certain order, so I've tried to put things below in the order you should do them to avoid the mad scramble I had halfway through. Follow everything below to the letter and you'll have an easier time than I did!

Remove butter from refrigerator and allow to come to room temperature while you prepare everything else.|
Line 2 round cake pans with parchment on the bottom.
Preheat oven to 175C/350F.
If making your own buttermilk, add lemon juice to milk as above and set aside.
If making your own cake flour, sift together the cornstarch and flour as above.
Sift baking powder, salt, and baking soda into the cake flour and set aside.
Melt the chocolate and set aside.
Separate the eggs, set the yolks aside, and beat the whites until stiff but not dry.
Add ¼ c sugar to the egg whites, then beat again until very stiff and glossy.
Set beaten whites aside.
By this time, your butter should be close to room temperature so you can proceed with the recipe.
Cream butter, remaining ½ c sugar, and vanilla.
Add yolks and beat well.
Add chocolate (now melted but cool) and blend.
Gradually beat in honey.
Scald the milk on the stove or in the microwave.
Meanwhile, add sifted flour mixture and buttermilk to chocolate mixture, then beat until smooth.
Fold egg whites gently into batter, then stir in the scalded milk until mixture is of uniform consistency.
Pour into prepared cake pans and bake 20-30 minutes until a pick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Allow to cool completely, then frost.

frosting:

Blend melted shortening, salt, and cocoa.
Add milk and vanilla and beat well (mixture will be dark and grainy).
Add powdered sugar in 3 parts, blending after each.
If mixture is too thick, add a few drops of milk and cream until silky smooth.
Frost the cake and enjoy!

the ingredients:
the cake:

¼ cup butter, softened to room temperature
¾ c sugar, divided
½ tsp vanilla
2 eggs, separated
4 oz unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled
½ c honey\
2 c cake flour, sifted (make your own cake flour by placing 2 tbsp cornstarch into your measuring cup then filling with flour, for a total of 4 tbsp cornstarch for 2 cups of flour)
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
½ tsp baking soda
½ c buttermilk (make your own by placing 1 ½ tsp lemon juice into your ½ cup measuring cup, then filling with milk and leaving stand 5-10 minutes until slightly thickened)
½ c milk, scalded (heat milk until tiny bubbles appear around the outer rim but milk does not boil)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the frosting:

¼ c shortening or Stork, melted
¼ tsp salt
½ c cocoa
1/3 c milk
1 ½ tsp vanilla
3 ½ c powdered sugar, sifted & divided

Walnut Butter Cookies

When I started this blog, I didn't like walnuts. I found them bitter and greasy, which is a terrible combination, and I didn't like the texture, which I deemed less crisp than pecans (an objectively superior nut). And maybe it's the fact that I grew up making visits to my great-great-aunt's house in Forsyth, Georgia, where she would give me a pecan-picker and send me out into the yard to gather as many of the tastiest papershell pecans I've ever tasted, but I always felt like walnuts were the nuts for people who couldn't get their hands on good pecans. Well, friends, I now live in Scotland, where pecans are just as expensive as walnuts and... honestly, only so-so. I've spent my entire adult life swapping pecans and walnuts in any recipe that calls for them, but then I started this blog, and something strange happened.

Sometime around September, when I made this Courgette Walnut Bread, I started to like them. And by the time I made this Orange-Infused Cream Cheese Nut Bread, my opinion was firmly pro-walnut. (This was an exciting development for me, as nearly all of Eleanor's dessert recipes include-- either mandatorily or as a suggestion-- some kind of nuts, most often walnuts.) So I was legitimately excited about these cookies: I mean, they have butter in their name. Plus, they include coffee (I mean, instant, but still).

So I figured these cookies would be incredible-- like a moister, grown-up version of a Pecan Sandy, with just a hint of coffee throughout. But... well, I was wrong.

Part of this may be my fault: the recipe calls for 'instant coffee,' which, to me, means instant coffee powder, because if it was it was meant to be instant coffee dissolved in water, wouldn't you just say 'coffee?' Also, the recipe says to 'sift flour, sugar, salt and coffee,' and since I obviously can't sift liquid coffee, I figured it was powder that would then dissolve when the butter in the cookies melted in the oven. It's possible I was wrong about this, because the instant coffee did nothing but burn. It's also possible that something else went drastically awry here, because there was only supposed to be 2 teaspoons of coffee in the recipe, and even if it was liquid coffee, that was still not enough to moisten the dough enough for it to stick together. (I know this because I tried, after the 'powdered coffee' route ended so badly, to re-do the recipe with liquid coffee. It was equally unsuccessful.)

The dough was too dry, so not only did I have to handle it much more than I should have to get it to stick together (which itself made the cookies tough), but also I couldn't 'flatten' the cookies with a sugar-dipped glass because they were so dry that as soon as I tried to, the balls of dough just kind of exploded all over my cookie sheet.

But I tried to bake these anyway, and then this happened on the first batch:

So I knew it was just not meant to be. I still had some cookies that didn't get dropped, so I tasted them and they were terrible. They somehow managed to be both too tough AND too crumbly, and the instant coffee didn't dissolve at all, so it gave the cookies a weird graininess and a burned flavour because, hello, you're not supposed to cook instant coffee unless there is enough other liquid in the recipe to dissolve it.

New! One year ago: Tuna Teriyaki

The verdict:

0 spoons out of five. These cookies sucked.

The recipe:

Walnut Butter Cookies

the directions:

Preheat oven to 150C/300F.
Sift together flour, sugar, salt, and coffee in a medium bowl.
Cut in butter with a pastry blender until it is the size of small peas.
Press dough together and shape into small balls.
Roll each ball in walnuts, place 2” apart on a baking sheet, and press flat with the bottom of a glass dipped in sugar.
Bake 15-20 minutes until edges are slightly brown.

Yields 3 dozen.

the ingredients:

1 ½ c flour
½ c sugar
¼ tsp salt
2 tsp instant coffee
1 c butter
¾ c walnuts, chopped

Aunt Jenny's Swiss Chocolate Cake: A Blogiversary Party!

One year ago today, I pressed the launch button on this blog and haven't looked back since. I've made successes and disasters, and I've loved learning some amazing lessons along the way.

It’s true. I’ve been cooking recipes from this silly, dusty, amazing, special cardboard box for one entire year. I’ve made eleven cheesecakes, dozens of cookies, about a million casseroles, and more pie crust than I care to remember.

I’ve had some wild successes as well as some abysmal failures, and for every thing that I’ve learned, at least one more question has arisen: I've become great at melting chocolate! Why don't my cakes rise the way Eleanor's recipes almost inevitably say they will? I'm an amazing crepe-flipper! Why do nearly all of my recipes cook in half the time Eleanor promised they would? My pie crust is the butteriest, flakiest pie crust in all of Scotland! Why can't any of these recipes use cocoa powder instead of melted chocolate? I like casseroles! Why can't I make a batch of icing without coating my entire kitchen in a fine dusting of powdered sugar? I can make a soufflé! Why does every recipe in this box require me to sift flour? The weirdest things taste good, even when you think they won't!

It's twelve candles for twelve months... because one candle looked lonely.

I’ve conquered a huge amount of my cooking fears: things like making crepes, soufflés, and meringues no longer elude me. I’ve discovered go-to recipes for my favourite cheesecake, cranberry sauce, and an amazing recipe for apricot cookies. My patience and willingness to try new recipes has improved, and my ability to experiment successfully is constantly getting better.

Before you ask, though, Aunt Jenny is not my Aunt Jenny... or at least she's not only my Aunt Jenny. Aunt Jenny is the WORLD'S Aunt. The 1950s equivalent to Betty Crocker, Aunt Jenny was the mascot to a company called Spry, which was a major competitor to Crisco. In grammatically questionable history, Aunt Jenny is famed for her slogan 'With Spry, we can afford to have cake oftener!' Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Spry was a major competitor to Crisco and a staple of the New York City skyline, where they had a giant blinking sign that was visible from Brooklyn and probably viewed by Eleanor on a daily basis.* So, really, it's a miracle I only have the one recipe from Aunt Jenny, given Eleanor's love of all things cake-related.

So, when choosing a recipe to celebrate one year of successes, failures, trials, experiments, and taste-tests, what else could I possibly have chosen besides a chocolate cake? And since, in my humble opinion, homemade whipped cream will always trump almost any other ingredient,** here's a chocolate cake topped with fresh, sweetened whipped cream and bitter chocolate shavings. Perfect for enjoying like a grown-up, with a glass of red wine while you celebrate your accomplishments... and keep wondering what went wrong with the disasters.

*The other reason I know that this recipe dates to the 1950s is that the back of it includes an ad encouraging pregnant women to smoke Lucky Strikes, so... glad we've learned our lesson on that one.

**Except cheese, duh.

The verdict:

5 spoons out of five. A dense crumb due to the whipped cream sandwiched between the layers, a sweet lid with dark, bittersweet chocolate complementing the cloud of whipped cream, and double layers for added deliciousness? What else could you want out of a celebration cake?

New! One Year Ago:  Pollo Alla Verona & Greek Kourabiedes

The recipe:

Swiss Chocolate Cake

the directions:

Grease two 8” square or round cake pans and line bottom with parchment.
Preheat oven to 175C/350F.
Into a large mixing bowl, pour sifted flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
Stir gently, then add shortening or Stork, melted chocolate, evaporated milk, and 1 tsp vanilla.
Beat on very low speed until combined and smooth, approximately 45 seconds.
Add 2 eggs, then blend on low speed until combined and smooth, another 45 seconds, scraping sides of bowl.
Pour batter into prepared cake pans and bake for 20 minutes or until a pick inserted into the centre comes out clean.
Turn cakes out of pans and allow to cool thoroughly before decorating.
Once cakes have cooled, make whipped cream: blend cream, powdered sugar, and ¼ tsp vanilla at high speed until light and fluffy.
Layer half of cream between the layers of the cake, then spread the remaining whipped cream on top of the cake.
Decorate with shaved chocolate curls and chill for several hours before serving.
Once chilled, pour yourself a glass of wine, and enjoy.
​You deserve it.

the ingredients:

1 ¾ c cake flour, sifted
1 1/3 c sugar
3 ½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
¾ tsp salt
2/3 c shortening or Stork
2 oz chocolate, melted and cooled, plus extra for shaving
1 c evaporated milk
1 tsp + ¼ tsp vanilla, divided
2 eggs
2 c double cream or whipping cream
½ c powdered sugar, sifted